A book title or
description Selected Works has for a long time caused a peculiar
reaction in me.
Ever since adolescence I can’t help
thinking of someone selecting a gift. You are supposed to have trouble
selecting the right gift. Sometimes you get it wrong. I’m led to thinking the
person who selected the Selected Works might have got it wrong. The
older we get, the harder we are to please. I approach a Selected Works
ready to be disappointed. What if the editor left out a favourite poem, or, as
has been known, refers to a poem his Introduction but excludes it from the
book! If it is a gift, I feel sympathy for the giver, and guilt if the gift is
not exactly what I wanted.
I
prefer a Collected Works or a Complete Works. My preference abruptly reverses
if the item is a bulky volume or more
than two volumes. A Selected Works in
the rucksack is not so bad after all.
